For more than 20 years, Opera has provided people around the world with fast, secure and smart browsers that combine functionality with great design. Our browsers and mobile applications are used by more than 350 million people around the world and nearly 120 million people in Africa. 

In the African region, it was the Opera browser that first brought the full Internet experience to mobile phones. Today, we are glad to say that we are leading the exciting digital revolution on the continent as one in five Africans use Opera browsers everyday. 

In countries like Nigeria and Kenya, Opera is the browser of choice for every second mobile internet user. We believe that people choose our browsers and mobile products because they offer them features which are tailored for their needs. 

An example of this is the use of the data compression technology included in the Opera Mini browser. The data compression technology pre-processes and reduces the amount of data from a website. This allows for faster navigation, increases the browsing speed, and extends the data plan.

With this technology, Opera Mini has proven to be effective at saving major amounts of money in mobile data.

Mobile data is money 

In the 2019 edition of the State of the Mobile Web report, Opera showed that people in Africa who use Opera Mini saved more than 77 petabytes (77 million gigabytes) on mobile data. This amount equals over 100 million USD saved in mobile data costs during the full year in 2018. 

This is important because in some African countries mobile data remains very expensive. In South Africa, people pay on average $7.19 for one gigabyte of mobile data. This is six times more expensive than in India and almost the same cost as in Germany.

We don’t know when the costs of data will become more accessible. What we do know is that the data compression technology in Opera Mini has proven to be a great solution for people wanting to spend less money on data bundles.

It’s also been shown that people in the African region who use Opera Mini are able to save up to 90.36% of mobile data when browsing. This means that they get nine times more out of their mobile data than those using browsers without data compression.

These results are shown in the State of Mobile Web 2019 report and come from the latest Opera data compression test.

Meeting the increasing demand for news and video content 

Our company has evolved beyond being a mere developer of browsers. We have expanded our products and services and developed new mobile applications to satisfy the needs of people. 

In 2018, we announced the launch of our standalone news app, Opera News. Today, our news app is home to over 20 million active users monthly in Africa, and more than 30 million worldwide.

In its first year on the market, Opera News became the most downloaded news app in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Its popularity increased during the 2018 football World Cup with millions of users demanding more content and online videos. This demand led to Opera News adding Instaclips, a feature that allows people to upload, share and watch entertaining videos from the web. 

Currently, African users of Opera News spend more than 50% of their in-app time watching videos on Instaclips. This is a clear sign of engagement considering the service has only been live for half a year. 

Looking ahead

At Opera, we look towards future shifts in trends and usage habits. We are continuing to develop unique applications for the benefit of our users. In Kenya and Nigeria we are working with other endeavors, such as Fintech operations, which are rapidly growing by including new services that make life easier through online applications.

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